


A Very Unusual Prince

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 22:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14757395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: Mal and Evie sing "Once Upon a Dream"





	A Very Unusual Prince

**Author's Note:**

> from an anonymous request on tumblr

_“Would it be in poor taste to ask if you wanted to be Sleeping Beauty?”_ Evie had wondered.  
  
_“Extremely,”_  Mal flatly told her.  
  
_“Then I guess you’re going to be Phillip?”_  
  
_“The insufferable prince who hunted my mother down and stuck a sword through her chest? …Sure, I’ll be Phillip.”_

* * *

That was the conversation a week ago, when Auradon Prep’s student council had come to Mal and Evie and asked them to sing, reenacting Aurora and Phillip’s fateful first meeting as part of a play, a showcase of true love to be performed for some of the kingdom’s younger kids. Mal didn’t think that six year olds  _needed_ to be subjected to the nonsense of true love at their age, but hey, it wasn’t her show. She was just acting in it. So they’d decided that Mal would be the prince, and Evie, the princess. Sleeping Beauty’s bit was just one small part of the play, and after a year in Auradon they already knew the iconic “Once Upon a Dream” by heart, so there really wasn’t much to do in the way of rehearsing. But still, Evie wanted their performance to be absolutely perfect, and Mal went along with each and every one of Evie’s thespian whims.  
  
Which is exactly how Saturday afternoon had them in dress rehearsal, in an actual forest just like Phillip and Aurora were back in the day. No, Evie hadn’t designed the outfits, despite her very vocal opposition to the fact, and had grudgingly resigned to using the costume replicas student council had supplied. They’d changed at school before they went out to the forest, and did Mal ever see a sight when Evie stepped out in that plain, peasant girl dress of Aurora’s.  
  
Blue hair spilled in place of golden blonde over the beige shoulders and sleeves of the dress, and Mal imagined the black bodice complimented Evie’s hair far more than it did Sleeping Beauty’s. But hey, Mal was biased. As for her, when it came to the prince’s brown and black getup, she was far from impressed. Her artistic spirit was nothing short of offended at the drabness of the royal's raiments. Positively medieval. She felt she was dressed more like a stable boy than a prince.  
  
The forest glade was a nice little spot, Mal had a look around when they arrived. Birds in the trees, warm sunlight, a clean spring breeze drifting through.  
  
“So is student council also loaning us the dress-up playing animals or do we have to sing for our own?” she wickedly teased.  
  
Evie shook her head, stifling a long-suffering sigh.  
  
“Honestly, M…”  
  
“What? You made us have a dress rehearsal, you dragged us all the way out to the forest, shouldn’t we have the animals too?”  
  
“We’ll make do without them. So, you just go stand over there, wait in those bushes. You’re supposed to be drawn out by the sound of my voice,” Evie said.  
  
“Easy enough.”  
  
So Mal crossed the clearing, ducking into the bushes and playing her part. She didn’t think it would sell without the ridiculous rabbits ridiculously hopping around in her princely boots, but again, it wasn’t her show. She was just rehearsing in it. She could hear Evie out by the trees, centering herself with deep breaths. Mal smiled, she could see Evie perfectly in her mind’s eye, the look on her face as she readied herself to sing. A familiar sight, Evie singing was something she’d know anytime, anywhere.  
_  
“I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream…I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam.”_  
  
Mal smiled even more brightly to herself when she heard Evie’s voice, almost letting the familiar sound of it run away with her until she remembered they were supposed to be rehearsing. So she stuck to her script, mentally slipping into the prince’s shoes and curiously peeking her head out from the bushes, acting like she’d followed that mystifying voice from all the way across the forest.  
  
_“Yet I know it’s true that visions are seldom all they seem…”  
_  
And there was Evie, dancing on her own across the forest clearing, the hem of her dress daintily held between her fingertips as she gracefully twirled along to the sound of her own voice.  
  
_“But if I know you, I know what you’ll do, you’ll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream.”_  
  
Mal didn’t remember Evie looking like that as they practiced their dancing, late nights stumbling over each other’s feet and their own as they waltzed around the dorm room. Mal didn’t remember Evie being as picturesque as a music box ballerina, her dress spiraling around her like a flower bud blooms in the sun. Only she could turn a peasant dress into a princess ballgown.  
  
It was effortless the way Evie glided, humming the chorus of the song to herself as she imagined she really was dancing with a whimsical cadre of animals, all dressed up in a prince’s cape and hat to play pretend.  
  
_“But if I know you, I know what you’ll do…”  
_  
That line was Mal’s cue, and she almost missed it, fixated on Evie the way she was. It was her cue to come out from the bushes and silently pad across the grass to Evie’s side, pretending to sneak over and take the place of the imaginary animals as Evie’s dance partner.  
  
_“You’ll love me at once…”_  Evie spun herself right into Mal’s arms, as was _her_  cue.  
  
_“The way you did once upon a dream,”_  Mal sang the prince’s verse.  
  
Here was Evie’s favorite part, acting as the stunned and shocked Aurora when she was suddenly faced with a singing stranger come out of the forest to greet her.  
  
“Oh…” she turned around, eyes going wide as she saw Mal behind her.  _“Oh.”_  
  
She tried to run away, but Mal caught her by the hand, running a thumb back and forth along her skin.  
  
“I’m awfully sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Mal smiled, doing her best to channel the aura of dashing and debonair prince.  
  
“Oh, it…wasn’t that.”  
  
Evie pulled her hand free, again making to distance herself from Mal, but Mal was too quick, taking a gentle hold of her once more. Evie made an excellent wide-eyed princess, curiously studying herself and Mal, standing there hand in hand.  
  
“It’s just that you’re a…a…”  
  
Evie backed away before she could bring herself to say the word. Mal reached for her a third time before she could get too far away, wrapping an arm around her waist and smiling as she met Evie’s eyes.  
  
“A stranger?” she helpfully finished. She had her lines down pat.  
  
“…Mhm,” Evie shyly nodded.  
  
“But don’t you remember? We’ve met before.”  
  
“We…we have?” Evie tilted her head to the side, acting confused. Her hair spilled perfectly past her shoulder with the gesture.  
  
“Why, of course. You said so yourself,” Mal pulled Evie in close, just inches left between them now. “Once upon a dream.”  
  
Unsure brown watched confident green for just a moment too long, a moment that had both girls briefly forgetting they still had a scene to finish rehearsing.   
  
Mal had always hated the stories of Auradon’s most famous couples, how they fawned and fell for each other with just a single glance, declaring true and everlasting love after mere days or weeks. But right then and there, with her arm around Evie, it didn’t seem like quite so farfetched a concept.  
  
_“…I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream,”_ Mal remembered to sing.  _“I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam.”_  
  
Playing the part of Sleeping Beauty, Evie let herself relax into the embrace of this captivating mystery prince, a soft smile tugging the corners of her lips as she and Mal eased into the waltz they’d practiced again and again, night after night.  
_  
“And I know it’s true, that visions are seldom all they seem,”_  the two sang together.  
  
As the prince, Mal led, her feet moving instinctively and expertly to carry her and Evie across the clearing in a series of graceful circles, past the towering trees and chirping birds hiding in the branches. One arm around Evie, one hand clasping Evie’s, both eyes helplessly locked on Evie’s. There again was that music box ballerina, dancing her mesmerizing ballet under Mal’s guidance.  
  
_“But if I know you, I know what you’ll do…”_  
  
Mal was almost certain that the way she and Evie sang together was the entire reason that student council had asked them to perform in the first place. Evie’s voice was enchanting all on its own as she began the song, but when she and Mal sang together, it was a whole new symphony, a dazzling new concert.  
  
_“You’ll love me at once…”_  
  
Mal spun Evie, then held her at arm’s length and twirled her again, tracing a circle across the grassy ground without ever taking her eyes off her.  
  
_“The way you did once…upon a dream.”_  
  
Their waltz ended when their song did, but still they had their roles to play. Hand in hand, they walked off, pretending to have come to a spot where the entire kingdom was spread out before them, just like it once was for Phillip and Aurora. Evie kept that dreamy expression painted across her face, the look of a girl quite literally meeting the prince of her dreams.  
  
And when Mal cupped Evie’s cheek in her hand and kissed her ever so softly, it was the first time Evie broke character.  
  
“Mal!” she pulled away, startled, but not startled enough to end the kiss before she’d thoroughly had a chance to take it in. “That isn’t what we rehearsed!”  
  
“…No. It’s called improv.”  
  
When Mal smiled at her, it wasn’t the pretend smile of an unusual prince. It was all Mal.  
  
“…Improv,” Evie mused. “As in…not in the script.”  
  
“As in Phillip was an idiot for missing his one perfect chance to kiss Aurora and instead got stuck kissing away a sleeping curse.”  
  
“So you think Aurora and Phillip should have kissed here, in the forest. But they hardly knew each other, M.”  
  
“Yes they did. They’d met before,” Mal brushed her nose against Evie’s. “Once upon a dream.”  
  
“Oh…you’re right. Then…” Evie’s cheeks turned very pink. “Can you show me how that scene goes again?”  
  
“A lot like this.”  
  
A second kiss, where Evie pressed herself close against Mal and utterly gave in, letting her eyes fall shut and her arms drape themselves over Mal’s shoulders.  
  
When she opened them again, the gleam in Evie’s eyes was simply the stars sparkling.  
  
“…We should rehearse that some more,” she quietly said.  
  
“Then it wouldn’t be improvisation,” Mal’s eyes traced the shape of Evie’s lips as she spoke.  
  
“I know, but our act has to be perfect, after all.”  
  
Evie leaned in, parted lips enticing Mal as mere inches again were the only space between them. Mal gave in with a smile and a nod, thinking that this was a far better story than Phillip and Aurora could ever tell.  
  
“Yeah, E. Perfect.”


End file.
